In the past I've been open about not really understanding Black Friday, although recently I've come to see it as something people enjoy as a ritual rather than for any logical reason. Some people enjoy going shopping at like 4 AM rather than buying things online for the same reason some people enjoy going to a sporting event rather than watching it on TV. I've made peace with the fact that it's stupid and people like it anyway, and I've stopped trying to talk anyone out of following the herd.

Then they started this "Friday starts on Thursday morning" shit.

Look, I could recite all of the reasons why this is fucked up from the macro perspective: crass consumerism replacing family time, expansion of the holiday spending frenzy, the inability of small businesses to compete, etc etc. The only thing that really bothers me about it, though, is the way that low-wage service industry employees are being forced to sacrifice one of the few remaining holidays on which Americans are not expected to work. As a person who usually spends it at home alone these days, economic activity shuts the hell down on Thanksgiving. Everything is closed. Even the gas stations and chain fast food restaurants are closed. Bars are closed. Even the few things that seem to stay open on Christmas are closed. It's essentially the last holiday in our economy that is a "day off" in the literal sense for everyone who isn't working in an emergency room or a fire station. At least the people in those professions are relatively well compensated for the scheduling sacrifices they make. The people working the floor at Target – not so much.

Perhaps we're overreacting to this. Maybe people working retail are fine with the opportunity to (hopefully) get time-and-a-half for working on a holiday. The problem is that people who aren't OK with it can't do anything about it. Hourly retail staff are among the lowest paid and most powerless people in our workforce. Like fast food workers they are viewed as disposable and high turnover is expected. If you don't like it, there's the door. And when you end up choosing family over a day doing inventory, you become another Lazy and inherently flawed person wearing the scarlet U of the unemployed.

If you're going to get fired for trying to do normal human things like spend a holiday A) not working and B) with family, it should at least be on account of how vitally important your job is. The people working the register at the big box stores probably aren't over that bar.

If I were to make a simple video, what would be the best way for a person with no such experience to edit together a few different clips, add some basic text to the video, and perhaps add voiceover? I don't want to purchase expensive software and it would help if the product is designed so that children and your parents can figure out how to use it correctly.

I wasn't good at playing make-believe as a child and I'm no better at it as an adult. The best course of action is to call things as they are and not how we might like them to be. The reality, as we stand here looking back at another dead unarmed black male who posed enough of a threat to merit a lethal response, is that if the George Zimmermans and Darren Wilsons of the world are justified in doing what they did then our legal system has decided as a whole that being a black male is probable cause. You are legally a threat by virtue of the fact that you are a black male. Nothing you do or wear or say matters. The probable cause is that you exist; you are black and male and anyone who shoots you only needs to point out those two facts because it is universally recognized that black males are threatening.

The legal system and law enforcement are structured in a way that allows me, a white male, to justify doing violence to you up to and including taking your life simply by claiming that I felt threatened by you. In fact, my legal footing is stronger if I do take your life since that eliminates the potential of a conflicting version of events being presented in court (not that there is likely to be a trial, nor that your version of events would be considered credible). The logic, such as it is, is tautological; I felt threatened because you are a black male, because black males are threatening. Every one is a mugging, shooting, sexual assault, or burglary waiting to happen. I don't need to justify it because everyone (within the white power structure, of course) knows that that's just How You People Are.

My right to respond to feeling threatened in whatever manner I choose is worth more in the eyes of the law than black men's lives. If you and I have some sort of altercation, I can wait until it's over and you are 100-some feet away and then shoot you. I can shoot you even if you are running away because you are still a threat because you are always a threat. You are never not a threat when in public. Your best course of action might be to stay at home and indoors, although that will protect you only from vigilantes. Law enforcement is another story.

If anyone interprets my tone here as endorsing this reality, that is not the case. There is no point in kidding ourselves as a society, though: when a grand jury decides that a police officer shooting an unarmed teen isn't even worth discussing, that's a special kind of brazen. With Rodney King at least we went through the charade of a trial before declaring the cops Not Guilty. Now apparently law enforcement doesn't even feel compelled to do that much. It wouldn't have been hard to go through the motions and have an all-white jury return a resounding Not Guilty. Hell, it's pretty much standard operating procedure in these situations. But they did not decide that Darren Wilson is not guilty – they decided that whether or not he is guilty isn't even worth discussing.

In closing, as a Leader in the White Community it is of course my responsibility to apologize for my fellow white people. Please don't read any comment sections for the next week or two.

Detroit Porn, like Urban Blight Porn in general, is pretty played out at this point. A follower on Facebook suggested that I watch this video, though, and because it was produced by Detroiters rather than outside voyeur-journalists I decided to give it a shot. If you have the opportunity, give it a watch.

The first ten minutes are standard Michael Moore-style "Everyone is unemployed and the CEO gave himself a giant bonus" boilerplate that is so familiar to us now that it hardly registers. The next ten minutes about Detroit's local elected officials is…more interesting.

It is not a surprise that any city's elected officials – mayors, county boards, city councils, assessors, etc. – turn out to be incompetent boobs. Frankly it's more shocking when a local public servant isn't a knucklehead. What very few people appreciate, however, is how corrupt they are compared to, say, members of Congress and why the near-complete absence of interest in local elections ensures that we'll never get anyone better. Certainly I would never imply that corruption is absent at the higher levels of government; only that it is more common and significantly more brazen at the local level. Detroit is just one of many big cities whose elected officials could be used to prove that point.

The problem is that most Americans pay very little attention to politics. What attention they pay is generally devoted to the big national political issues of the day and Washington. As newspaper readership continues to plunge, radio programming is increasingly syndicated/nationalized, and local news is downplayed we are left few people outside of the over-55 local TV news watching and newspaper reading demographic paying any attention to local politics. Not coincidentally that's also essentially the only group voting in local-only elections, in which turnout is often under 10%.

Morons, scam artists, lunatic extremists, the guy who owns 8 bars in your medium sized city…this is the kind of person who ends up on a county board. And they will continue to because local politics are ignored unless and until someone makes the mistake of trying to raise property taxes by 0.01% or pass a bond issue to do something evil and socialist like build a library or fire department. Then the pitchforks and torches come out, of course.

This is a silly question to ask on some level since anybody out there who could answer it correctly would be too busy getting rich off of it to waste time idly perusing the internet. Regardless, I can't shake the feeling that with the possible exception of the internet (and before that, the home computer) there hasn't been anything new lately. What passes for new technology these days is almost inevitably an improvement, be it incremental or exponential, of some extant technology. Things get faster, smaller, and cheaper. We get more and better ways to waste away our lives staring at movies, games, and the internet. Medicine gets a little better at treating what ails us, cars get a little faster, food gets more plentiful (and imperishable, although we dare not ask how). We have conquered instantaneous global communication and the cheap mass production of any imaginable disposable consumer good (turns out the key ingredients were Slave Wages and complete lack of regulation).

I'm not bright enough to think of anything actually new, here are my best guesses at the next incremental steps forward that will make someone who isn't me a multi-billionaire someday:

1. Cheap, safe wireless energy transmission. Recharge electronic devices (not to mention electric cars) without plugs, cords, or wired infrastructure. We've already taken some baby steps in this direction with charging mats, but whoever can invent something that allows you to charge your phone and laptop just by walking into a building is going to print money.

2. Non-brittle carbon fiber / composites that can replace steel. CF was hailed as a revolutionary breakthrough back in the 90s, but unfortunately despite being extremely strong it is also brittle as hell. Whoever overcomes that problem will have a material that can replace metal and masonry in buildings, vehicles, heavy machinery, prosthetics…

3. Doing away with the physical interfaces between us and our various computing devices. I have no idea how this could work, but eventually someone will find a way to make this sentence appear on my computer screen as soon as I think it. The keyboard and my fingers will be superfluous.

4. Artificial organs that are improvements upon, not just replacements for, the real ones. Any significant further extension of our lifespans will require either some way to stop aging (unlikely) or organ replacements that last forever and perform even better than the ones nature gave us.

5. Online smells. As stupid as it might be, someone's going to find a way to do it and then middle schoolers texting each other farts is going to be a billion dollar per year industry.

One of the reasons conservatives are so sensitive to charges of being a movement composed mostly of virulently angry, reactionary, and sometimes violent white men is that they are a movement composed mostly of virulently angry, reactionary, and sometimes violent white men. The Republican Party expends an incredible amount of effort and resources on image doctoring; every time some elected official or party worker lets the mask slip away and the rest of us see them for what they really are, the spin doctors rush in to tell us, in a tone that suggests that they are actually trying to convince themselves, that Republicans are smart, forward thinking, and kind people.

Fortunately the internet allows every yahoo on Earth to spout off with no filter whatsoever. I like to call internet comment sections "Where Hope Goes to Die," but in reality they give us the important opportunity to see what those wonderful, honest, generous, hard-working Americans who make up the right side of the ideological spectrum are really like when there are no Communications Directors and PR hacks around to teach them how not to sound like cave monsters.

Yesterday, some random guy was found near the White House with a rifle (which was unlicensed and unregistered) when apprehended by the Secret Service. Fox News posted this item on its Facebook feed. I took a pair of screen captures of the first screen or two of comments on the post:

There it is. That's what they are: mean, reactionary, semi-literate, and violent. They haven't the most basic understanding of the laws and rights they claim to cherish, and most of the comments sum to "It would be awesome if someone murdered the president." The reason they are so sensitive to the charge that this is what they are like is that they know, even if they won't admit it, that this is in fact exactly what they are like.

I am a realist about what I do for a living. At no point do I believe that students are going to remember in ten years 90% of what they learn in my classes. Instead, the goal is to get the 10% to stick somehow. They won't remember how the House leadership is structured but hopefully they'll remember that the fundamental problem in Congress is that what is best for each individual member does not add up to the best outcome for the nation as a whole. They won't remember the different types of elections that coexist in our system, but hopefully they'll remember that people vote when the costs are sufficiently low and it makes them feel good to do it.

When I talk about the courts (in the context of an Intro class, we have exactly one week to devote to a large number of subjects, so withhold your "Look how smart and great at your job I am" comments laden with minutiae) I know that there isn't much they will remember. One thing I try to emphasize, though, is that the Supreme Court is political. It is inherently political and nobody should expect that it, or any other institution made up of human beings, is a completely neutral and fair-minded arbiter. It is somewhat baffling to see these occasional "OMG guys did you realize the Supreme Court is basically driven by politics and ideology?" pieces in the media as though anyone out there paying the slightest bit of attention does not already realize this.

The Supreme Court is, was, and always will be political for two basic reasons. One is that the process in which the justices are chosen is political. Presidents select the person closest to themselves in ideology from a set of boundaries established by the ideological makeup of the Senate at that moment. Likewise, the Senate, especially if controlled by the opposite party, pushes as hard as it can to convince the president that its willingness to confirm the appointee has a limit. Barack Obama looks at the Senate and asks himself if it's worth it to try to nominate the most extremist liberal he can find when he could appoint someone who is still really liberal but will be confirmed with flying colors. Of course it isn't, and with a Republican Senate the person he would choose would have to be less liberal still. Political reality dictates the choices.

Second, the issues the Court is asked to resolve are political. Irrespective of one's preferences, when asked to resolve political questions the institution becomes unavoidably political. This has gotten much worse in recent years as the actual political process – the one with elected officials who do everything in their power to avoid going on record to vote on highly contentious issues – punts issues to the judiciary to decide. Gay marriage? Why cast a vote in Congress that could be a liability when you can just wait for a series of legal decisions to sort it out? The Supreme Court is tasked in a wink-and-nod way with resolving a lot of issues that are politically unfeasible for Congress or even State Legislatures to tackle. This suits most elected officials just fine, abdicating responsibility and then reaping the benefits of pissing and moaning about whatever the courts decide.

If anything, today's court is less explicitly made up of partisan hacks than it was for most of our history. Check out some of those Civil War and Reconstruction-era courts if you doubt that. We don't have to be thrilled with the political role the Supreme Court plays but we certainly shouldn't be surprised by it.

People around these parts have the strange tendency to think that the phrase "Will it play in Peoria?" is cute and charming. This is unusual, of course, inasmuch as it is an entertainment industry way of saying, "Will stupid people like this?" The city is far more famous for that and has been for a while; Ambrose Bierce wrote in his Devil's Dictionary:

DULLARD, n. A member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life. The Dullards came in with Adam, and being both numerous and sturdy have overrun the habitable world. The secret of their power is their insensibility to blows; tickle them with a bludgeon and they laugh with a platitude. The Dullards came originally from Boeotia, whence they were driven by stress of starvation, their dullness having blighted the crops. For some centuries they infested Philistia, and many of them are called Philistines to this day. In the turbulent times of the Crusades they withdrew thence and gradually overspread all Europe, occupying most of the high places in politics, art, literature, science and theology. Since a detachment of Dullards came over with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower and made a favorable report of the country, their increase by birth, immigration, and conversion has been rapid and steady. According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians. The intellectual centre of the race is somewhere about Peoria, Illinois, but the New England Dullard is the most shockingly moral.

People who see themselves as cultural, financial, or educational elites think very little of The Common Folk. Always have, always will. Hell, even people who are demonstrably dumb as a post think they are smarter than everyone else. If this shocks you, you are among the post-like. Powerful Hollywood people cannot believe the shit Average Americans will pay to watch and listen to. The guy who runs McDonald's probably refuses to eat the slop he's trying to sell to rubes. And yes, to the feigned shock of millions of Obama-addled conservatives this past week, our political leaders think we have the intellectual capacity of a potted plant coupled with the attention span of a goldfish.

If one thing has distinguished conservatives over the years it is their deep and profound respect for the wisdom of the masses and the average voter, right? Yeah I'm pretty sure that's correct. They talk about it all the time, I think.

Feigned outrage and equally feigned worship of Salt of the Earth, Hard Working Americans are so central to the Republican playbook at this point that it would be a shock if they weren't banging the drum as hard as they are right now over a years-old video featuring an academic who was anything but the "architect of Obamacare." While your uncles and the cast of Fox & Friends are busy acting shocked – shocked, I tell you – at the idea of a highly-paid consultant who thinks most people are morons (an assertion that is pretty easy to prove empirically), ask yourself how likely you would be to believe him if he said "American voters are very wise." Wouldn't seem terribly sincere, would it?

The upcoming Supreme Court decision on the healthcare reform law might be the most important since Citizens United, not only because striking down the law would impact the ability of many Americans to afford health insurance. It is more important as a barometer of just how far down the rabbit hole of partisan hackery the right-wing majority on the Court has traveled.

The latest "legal" challenge essentially based on a typo and a ridiculously overly-literal reading of one sentence in the bill that, if the logic of this argument is followed, implies that only insurance exchanges run by individual states and not by the Federal government can subsidize insurance. This is the kind of argument you make when you have lost an argument. You start measuring the margins and checking the font size to see if some irrelevant minutiae of the code of bureaucratic requirements has been violated. You pull out the dictionary and parse every word according to the most obtuse reading of its literal meaning. You take individual phrases out of context and read them in a vacuum while entirely disregarding the meaning of the text in its entirety.

At least four people on the Supreme Court think this case is worth hearing, which is alarming given how sophomoric and pedantic this argument is. These are people who argue that aside from the text itself the most important consideration in interpreting the Constitution is the intent of its authors – and here they are poised to completely disregard the intent of the people who wrote and voted on a piece of legislation. Irony doesn't get more ironical than that.

If the law is struck down on this basis – and it might be – the five ancient right-wing hacks on the Court have initiated an entirely new era of jurisprudence wherein every law, rule, and regulation will be subject to legal challenges based on a pedant's most intentionally obtuse reading of the text. Where would be the limit? This is not an invocation of a Slippery Slope; it is a legitimate question. Could a law be invalidated for being printed on the wrong kind of paper? Could it be invalidated if something is misspelled? If a punctuation mark is used incorrectly? If a member of the leadership in the House or Senate misspeaks or pronounces a word incorrectly during the procedural stage of voting on the bill? If I get an audio recording of a voice vote and argue that some members were saying "eye" instead of "aye"?

Answering questions of this variety seems like an excellent use of the time of our nation's jurists. This type of argument used to get laughed out of court; hell, it used to get laughed out of a second-year law school seminar room. And now because OBAMA it is being entertained seriously by the most powerful court in the land. Cool.